The Atomic Submarine
Encyclopedia
The Atomic Submarine is a 1959 science fiction film
starring Arthur Franz
, Dick Foran
and Brett Halsey, with John Hillard as the voice of the alien. The film was directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet
, the script was adapted by Orville H. Hampton from a short story by Jack Rabin and Irving Block. The film is an alien invasion
story that showcases the then new technology of nuclear submarine
s.
had a world of trouble reaching the North Pole
. He postulates that Peary would have been amazed that in a few decades that same pole he had such trouble reaching had become a major thoroughfare for civilian and military shipping. The prologue ends when the film tells of a futuristic prediction of cargo-carrying atomic submarines. One of those submarines is shown being destroyed by a mysterious undersea light. The loss of this submarine and several other ships alarms the world. Governments temporarily close the pole to traffic and convene an emergency meeting at The Pentagon
.
Present at the meeting is Commander
Dan Wendover (Dick Foran), the Captain
of the atomic submarine Tigershark, and Nobel Prize
winning scientist Sir Ian Hunt (Tom Conway). The United States Secretary of Defense
Justin Murdock (Jack Mulhil) leads the meeting. He explains all that is known about the disasters in the Arctic
. The Secretary then describes the high-tech capabilities of the Tigershark. These include a special hull and a mini-sub, the Lungfish, that can be stored inside the larger sub. The Secretary finishes the meeting by telling Captain Wendover that he is to take Hunt and the rest of the Tigersharks crew to find the cause of the ship sinkings and, if possible, eliminate it.
The next several scenes introduce the audience to Lieutenant Commander
Richard "Reef" Holloway (Arthur Franz), the Executive Officer
of the Tigershark. Also shown is how a submarine gathers its crew together on short notice and sets sail. Holloway is told that he will be bunking with the inventor of the Lungfish, Dr. Carl Neilson. At first he is thrilled. Holloway believes that his bunkmate is Dr. Neilson Sr., a scientist he reveres. To his dismay, Holloway learns that his bunkmate is instead Dr. Carl Neilson Jr. (Brett Halsey), a pacifistic scientist he dislikes.
The scenes after that show day-to-day life on an atomic submarine. After a time, the submariners do finally find the cause of the disasters: a saucer-shaped
underwater craft with a strange light coming out of an eye-shaped window. The window is located at the top and in the center of the ship's upper dome. One of the Tigersharks scientists, Dr. Clifford Kent (Victor Varconi), briefly shows a photo of an Unidentified Flying Object
taken from his days as a UFO investigator for the Air Force. Investigaging such phenomena was his job in those days. Because of that photo and its similarity to this vessel, the submariners began to realize that their quarry is an extraterrestrial life
form. Inspired by the eye-shaped window, the crew nickname the spacecraft "Cyclops
".
Commander Wendover orders the submarine's most powerful torpedo
es fired on the saucer. The torpedoes reach the saucer, but are stopped short of it by a gel-like extrusion from the saucer, and they do not explode. While dismayed by this failure, the captain knows that he has to do something to stop the ship sinkings, so he orders the Tigershark to ram the spacecraft. The submarine's nose breaks into the lower side of the saucer and becomes trapped there.
Lieutenant Commander Holloway and Dr. Neilson then lead a team aboard the Lungfish and enter the spacecraft. Once inside, Holloway and crew find dark hallways with little illumination. It is then that Holloway gets his first telepathic message from the spacecraft's sole occupant, an octopus-like creature with only one eye. Holloway meets the creature "face to face". In the course of their conversation, the alien proves its hostile intent by savagely killing the other members of the away team. The creature further proves hostile by announcing to Holloway that it plans to bring several human specimens back to its home planet and eventually return with more of its kind to take over the Earth. Now realizing that he has a lot more to worry about than a few ship sinkings, Holloway attacks the alien by firing a Very pistol into its eye, temporarily blinding it. He races back to the Lungfish and returns to the Tigershark with Dr. Neilson. The Tigershark then breaks away from the saucer.
Holloway than tells Commander Wendover, "Captain, if that thing ever gets back to where it came from, the Earth and everyone on it is doomed." The submariners remember that their weapons failed the first time that they were used against the spaceship. They have an emergency meeting where The Tigersharks group of scientists develop a plan to turn one of their ICBMs into a ground-to-air missile. Their plan is carried out with the agreement of Commander Wendover and the aid of several crewmen. When the saucer rises from the ocean and attempts to return home, the Tigershark fires the missile and destroys the saucer and its occupant, thus saving the Earth. In a postlude, Holloway and the young Neilson are reconciled, with the latter realizing that his pacifism was no match for hostile aliens.
's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
in 1961 and the Japan
ese film Atragon
in 1963. In all three films, a high-tech nuclear submarine of the near-future travels to the deepest part of the ocean in order to save the Earth from destruction.
Coincidentally, Arthur Franz, who played Lieutenant Commander Holloway in The Atomic Submarine, guest starred on an episode of Irwin Allen's 1964 Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
television series.
Science fiction film
Science fiction film is a film genre that uses science fiction: speculative, science-based depictions of phenomena that are not necessarily accepted by mainstream science, such as extraterrestrial life forms, alien worlds, extrasensory perception, and time travel, often along with futuristic...
starring Arthur Franz
Arthur Franz
Arthur Franz was a B-movie actor whose most notable role was as Lieutenant, Junior Grade H. Paynter, Jr. in The Caine Mutiny. He also appeared in Roseanna McCoy , Invaders from Mars , Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man and The Unholy Wife , among others...
, Dick Foran
Dick Foran
John Nicholas 'Dick' Foran was an American actor, known for his performances in western musicals and for playing supporting roles in dramatic pictures.-Life and career:...
and Brett Halsey, with John Hillard as the voice of the alien. The film was directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet
Spencer Gordon Bennet
Spencer Gordon Bennet was an American film producer and director. Known as the "King of Serial Directors", he directed more film serials than any other director.-Biography:...
, the script was adapted by Orville H. Hampton from a short story by Jack Rabin and Irving Block. The film is an alien invasion
Alien invasion
The alien invasion is a common theme in science fiction stories and film, in which extraterrestrial life invades Earth either to exterminate and supplant human life, enslave it under a colonial system, harvest humans for food, steal the planet's resources, or destroy the planet altogether.The...
story that showcases the then new technology of nuclear submarine
Nuclear submarine
A nuclear submarine is a submarine powered by a nuclear reactor . The performance advantages of nuclear submarines over "conventional" submarines are considerable: nuclear propulsion, being completely independent of air, frees the submarine from the need to surface frequently, as is necessary for...
s.
Plot
The film begins with a brief prologue. The film's narrator (Pat Michaels) describes how in 1909, Robert PearyRobert Peary
Robert Edwin Peary, Sr. was an American explorer who claimed to have been the first person, on April 6, 1909, to reach the geographic North Pole...
had a world of trouble reaching the North Pole
North Pole
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is, subject to the caveats explained below, defined as the point in the northern hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface...
. He postulates that Peary would have been amazed that in a few decades that same pole he had such trouble reaching had become a major thoroughfare for civilian and military shipping. The prologue ends when the film tells of a futuristic prediction of cargo-carrying atomic submarines. One of those submarines is shown being destroyed by a mysterious undersea light. The loss of this submarine and several other ships alarms the world. Governments temporarily close the pole to traffic and convene an emergency meeting at The Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
.
Present at the meeting is Commander
Commander (United States)
In the United States, commander is a military rank that is also sometimes used as a military title, depending on the branch of service. It is also used as a rank or title in some organizations outside of the military, particularly in police and law enforcement.-Naval rank:In the United States...
Dan Wendover (Dick Foran), the Captain
Captain (naval)
Captain is the name most often given in English-speaking navies to the rank corresponding to command of the largest ships. The NATO rank code is OF-5, equivalent to an army full colonel....
of the atomic submarine Tigershark, and Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
winning scientist Sir Ian Hunt (Tom Conway). The United States Secretary of Defense
United States Secretary of Defense
The Secretary of Defense is the head and chief executive officer of the Department of Defense of the United States of America. This position corresponds to what is generally known as a Defense Minister in other countries...
Justin Murdock (Jack Mulhil) leads the meeting. He explains all that is known about the disasters in the Arctic
Arctic Ocean
The Arctic Ocean, located in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Arctic north polar region, is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceanic divisions...
. The Secretary then describes the high-tech capabilities of the Tigershark. These include a special hull and a mini-sub, the Lungfish, that can be stored inside the larger sub. The Secretary finishes the meeting by telling Captain Wendover that he is to take Hunt and the rest of the Tigersharks crew to find the cause of the ship sinkings and, if possible, eliminate it.
The next several scenes introduce the audience to Lieutenant Commander
Lieutenant commander (United States)
Lieutenant commander is a mid-ranking officer rank in the United States Navy, the United States Coast Guard, the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Corps, with the pay grade of O-4 and NATO rank code OF-3...
Richard "Reef" Holloway (Arthur Franz), the Executive Officer
Executive officer
An executive officer is generally a person responsible for running an organization, although the exact nature of the role varies depending on the organization.-Administrative law:...
of the Tigershark. Also shown is how a submarine gathers its crew together on short notice and sets sail. Holloway is told that he will be bunking with the inventor of the Lungfish, Dr. Carl Neilson. At first he is thrilled. Holloway believes that his bunkmate is Dr. Neilson Sr., a scientist he reveres. To his dismay, Holloway learns that his bunkmate is instead Dr. Carl Neilson Jr. (Brett Halsey), a pacifistic scientist he dislikes.
The scenes after that show day-to-day life on an atomic submarine. After a time, the submariners do finally find the cause of the disasters: a saucer-shaped
Flying saucer
A flying saucer is a type of unidentified flying object sometimes believed to be of alien origin with a disc or saucer-shaped body, usually described as silver or metallic, occasionally reported as covered with running lights or surrounded with a glowing light, hovering or moving rapidly either...
underwater craft with a strange light coming out of an eye-shaped window. The window is located at the top and in the center of the ship's upper dome. One of the Tigersharks scientists, Dr. Clifford Kent (Victor Varconi), briefly shows a photo of an Unidentified Flying Object
Unidentified flying object
A term originally coined by the military, an unidentified flying object is an unusual apparent anomaly in the sky that is not readily identifiable to the observer as any known object...
taken from his days as a UFO investigator for the Air Force. Investigaging such phenomena was his job in those days. Because of that photo and its similarity to this vessel, the submariners began to realize that their quarry is an extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...
form. Inspired by the eye-shaped window, the crew nickname the spacecraft "Cyclops
Cyclops
A cyclops , in Greek mythology and later Roman mythology, was a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of his forehead...
".
Commander Wendover orders the submarine's most powerful torpedo
Torpedo
The modern torpedo is a self-propelled missile weapon with an explosive warhead, launched above or below the water surface, propelled underwater towards a target, and designed to detonate either on contact with it or in proximity to it.The term torpedo was originally employed for...
es fired on the saucer. The torpedoes reach the saucer, but are stopped short of it by a gel-like extrusion from the saucer, and they do not explode. While dismayed by this failure, the captain knows that he has to do something to stop the ship sinkings, so he orders the Tigershark to ram the spacecraft. The submarine's nose breaks into the lower side of the saucer and becomes trapped there.
Lieutenant Commander Holloway and Dr. Neilson then lead a team aboard the Lungfish and enter the spacecraft. Once inside, Holloway and crew find dark hallways with little illumination. It is then that Holloway gets his first telepathic message from the spacecraft's sole occupant, an octopus-like creature with only one eye. Holloway meets the creature "face to face". In the course of their conversation, the alien proves its hostile intent by savagely killing the other members of the away team. The creature further proves hostile by announcing to Holloway that it plans to bring several human specimens back to its home planet and eventually return with more of its kind to take over the Earth. Now realizing that he has a lot more to worry about than a few ship sinkings, Holloway attacks the alien by firing a Very pistol into its eye, temporarily blinding it. He races back to the Lungfish and returns to the Tigershark with Dr. Neilson. The Tigershark then breaks away from the saucer.
Holloway than tells Commander Wendover, "Captain, if that thing ever gets back to where it came from, the Earth and everyone on it is doomed." The submariners remember that their weapons failed the first time that they were used against the spaceship. They have an emergency meeting where The Tigersharks group of scientists develop a plan to turn one of their ICBMs into a ground-to-air missile. Their plan is carried out with the agreement of Commander Wendover and the aid of several crewmen. When the saucer rises from the ocean and attempts to return home, the Tigershark fires the missile and destroys the saucer and its occupant, thus saving the Earth. In a postlude, Holloway and the young Neilson are reconciled, with the latter realizing that his pacifism was no match for hostile aliens.
Cast
- Arthur FranzArthur FranzArthur Franz was a B-movie actor whose most notable role was as Lieutenant, Junior Grade H. Paynter, Jr. in The Caine Mutiny. He also appeared in Roseanna McCoy , Invaders from Mars , Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man and The Unholy Wife , among others...
as Lieutenant Commander Richard 'Reef' Holloway - Dick ForanDick ForanJohn Nicholas 'Dick' Foran was an American actor, known for his performances in western musicals and for playing supporting roles in dramatic pictures.-Life and career:...
as Commander Dan Wendover - Brett HalseyBrett HalseyBrett Halsey , is an American film actor, sometimes credited as Montgomery Ford. He is best known as the original John Abbott on the soap opera The Young and the Restless, a role he held from May 1980 to March 1981, before being replaced by Jerry Douglas.-Career:Interested in acting since he was a...
as Dr. Carl Neilson - Paul Dubov as Lieutenant David Milburn
- Bob SteeleBob Steele (actor)Bob Steele was an American actor. He was born Robert Adrian Bradbury in Portland, Oregon, into a vaudeville family. After years of touring, the family settled down in Hollywood in the late 1910s, where his father, Robert N...
as CPO 'Grif' Griffin - Victor VarconiVictor VarconiVictor Varconi was a highly successful silent film star in Hungary. Born Mihály Várkonyi in Kisvárda, Austria-Hungary, he was the first Hungarian actor to make a film in the United States....
as Dr. Clifford Kent - Joi LansingJoi LansingJoi Lansing was an American model, film and television actress, as well as a nightclub singer. She was most noted for her pin-up photos, and for her minor roles in B-movies...
as Julie - Selmer Jackson as Admiral Terhune
- Jack MulhallJack MulhallJack Mulhall, born John Joseph Francis Mulhall, was a film actor since the silent film era and appeared in over 430 films....
as Secretary of Defense Justin Murdock - Jean MoorheadJean MoorheadJean Moorhead is an American actress and model. Using the name Jean Moorehead, she was Playboy magazine's Playmate of the Month for the October 1955 issue...
as Helen Milburn - Richard Tyler as Seaman Don Carney
- Sid MeltonSid MeltonSid Melton was an American actor known for his roles as incompetent carpenter Alf Monroe in the CBS sitcom Green Acres and as Uncle Charlie Halper, proprietor of the Copa Club, in Make Room for Daddy and its spin-offs.Born as Sidney Meltzer in Brooklyn, New York, he was the brother of screenwriter...
as Yeoman Chester Tuttle - Kenneth Becker as Seaman Al Powell
- Frank Watkins as Watkins
- Tom ConwayTom ConwayTom Conway was a British film and radio actor, and elder brother of actor George Sanders.-Early life:...
as Sir Ian Hunt - John HilliardJohn Kenneth HilliardJohn Kenneth Hilliard was an American acoustical and electrical engineer who pioneered a number of important loudspeaker concepts and designs. He helped develop the practical use of recording sound for film, and won an Academy Award in 1935...
as Voice of Spaceman - Pat Michaels as Narrator
Related films
Two later science fiction films also 'starred' nuclear submarines: Irwin AllenIrwin Allen
Irwin Allen was a television and film director and producer nicknamed "The Master of Disaster" for his work in the disaster film genre. He was also notable for creating a number of television series.- Biography :...
's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is an American science fiction film, produced and directed by Irwin Allen, released by 20th Century Fox in 1961. The story was written by Irwin Allen and Charles Bennett. Walter Pidgeon starred as Admiral Harriman Nelson, with Robert Sterling as Captain Lee Crane...
in 1961 and the Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese film Atragon
Atragon
Atragon, released in Japan as , is a 1963 Toho tokusatsu film based on a series of juvenile adventure novels under the banner Kaitei Gunkan by Shunrō Oshikawa and the illustrated story Kaitei Okoku by illustrator Shigeru Komatsuzaki, serialized in a monthly magazine for boys...
in 1963. In all three films, a high-tech nuclear submarine of the near-future travels to the deepest part of the ocean in order to save the Earth from destruction.
Coincidentally, Arthur Franz, who played Lieutenant Commander Holloway in The Atomic Submarine, guest starred on an episode of Irwin Allen's 1964 Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (TV series)
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is a 1960s American science fiction television series based on the 1961 film of the same name. Both were created by Irwin Allen, which enabled the movie's sets, costumes, props, special effects models, and sometimes footage, to be used in the production of the...
television series.
External links
- The Atomic Submarine essay at The Criterion CollectionThe Criterion CollectionThe Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions...
by Bruce Eder - The Atomic Submarine screenplay
- The Atomic Submarine film trailer at You Tube
- The Atomic Submarine film at You Tube (free, complete in 8 parts)